Backlog Bingo 2025: Lennus II

Lennus II (レナスII　封印の使徒, "Lennus II: Apostles of the Seals") is the last of the trio of "Ammy backlogs some SNES games that never came out here": like Mystic Ark being a sequel to 7th Saga, Lennus II is the sequel to, well, Lennus, obviously, a game that we got over here as Paladin's Quest in 1993. (The Japanese title of that game was "Lennus: Memories of an Ancient Machine", which is a much better title because there are zero paladins in Paladin's Quest.) I'm playing one of the two available fan translations, this one from Dynamic Designs: if that name sounds familiar, well, they also translated Mystic Ark of "game 16 in Backlog Bingo 2025" fame.

The first Lennus game is a weird bastard child of RPGs, mostly known for having an aesthetic that is weird but extremely memorable and not for a whole lot else, but I do own a physical copy, and have since I was a kid. I've always had a soft spot for it for being somewhat fresh and experimental even at the time, but I always knew that it was like...fine? as a game. Nothing really revelatory, but it took some interesting swings:

• there's no MP (all spells cost HP)
• there are no healing spells (all healing is through potion bottles that refill when you sleep at an inn)
• you have two fixed party members and two that you choose from a pool of like 20 mercenaries who don't really have more than token backstories, and which can't really be meaningfully upgraded
• you learn magic by learning its element through a sidequest (there are eight of these but iirc you start with fire, it's been a minute though)
• and then every element gives you one spell and every pair of elements gives you one spell, so there are 36 total. (8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1, though there are actually 37 because you get one for having every element)

Etc etc, there's a lot of just sending random mechanics and seeing what sticks. Lennus II is a lot more of that, but also with some of the rough edges filed off: you can now equip your party members instead of having a character you like be stuck with terrible early-game gear (you still cannot, however, change what spells they know), you power up spells by killing enemies that match their element instead of by using the spell so you aren't stuck spamming single-digit damage fire magic just to get fire magic points, there are a few quality of life improvements like a "heal the party" menu option that keeps you from going through several menus to use potions, etc. It's just a much smoother experience.

Also, the game is still gorgeous for the SNES: every character has great pixel art, the environments are vibrant, it still looks great.

Unfortunately, this game still didn't really sing for me, and I ended up ending it kinda thinking "yeah, that was fine, it was a LOT better than Mystic Ark at least". The story is entirely chained MacGuffin retrieval for 90% of it (though this is also true of the much-beloved Dragon Quest VIII so maybe this won't bother you): it can literally be explained as "get the four beepboops to do Proper Noun, but it turns out that doing that was actually bad, so now get the seven meepmorps to stop Proper Noun, there's a secret eighth meepmorp, get that, get them stolen, beat up four previously unmentioned goons to get back two meepmorps a piece, fight penultimate and final boss". This is not that reductive (though obviously there's a bit more going on in the worldbuilding moment to moment), but the overarching narrative kinda just never does much interesting. The moment to moment gameplay is fun enough, though, and encounters are quick, partially due to everything being snappier (likely because tons of people complained about the only way to hit the final boss of the first game being a spell with an eighteen second animation) and partially due to one summon spell (Summon Gubo) being an "end a random encounter" button for 90% of the game. It's not bad! It's just...not anything I'd really recommend. An absolutely textbook Doll Scale 2/5.

On a meta level, this ends the trio of "Ammy plays some of the bigger SNES RPGs that never came out in the US" game choices this year and wow doing in the same year as Clair Obscur was a mistake when I could have just played Clair Obscur instead (though I couldn't have known that at the time that I was playing either Terranigma or Mystic Ark). It turns out that I don't suddenly dislike JRPGs, I just need them to be doing more things that I like than I did when I was a literal child. Who'd've thought? (Me, I could have thought that, it turns out that I have higher media standards than a ten-year-old now.)